Bible Truths Illustrated by J. C. Ferdinand Pittman

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BIBLE TRUTHS ILLUSTRATED
country: "Now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly"
(Heb. 11 : 16). A garden, the leaves of the trees of which "were
for the healing of the nations" (Rev. 22:2). An inheritance:
"Incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away" (1 Pet.
1:4).
It is often asserted that heaven is simply a condition : that
where righteousness prevails, that is heaven. The figures
employed to portray heaven and our Lord's teaching show the
incorrectness of that theory. "I go to prepare a place for you
and if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will
receive you unto myself : that where I am, there ye may be
also" (John 14:2, 3).
But the realisation of heaven will exceed our highest expectations.
It is noticeable that John, in Revelation, depicts the
wealth of heaven, but says nothing concerning the riches of its
inhabitants. Possibly no tongue can tell of them, no pen can
write of them, nor hath entered the heart of man an adequate
conception of the greatness of the riches of the inheritance of
the saints in glory.
In heaven, two of our highest aspirations will be attained.
We shall see the King in His beauty, and "shall be like him."
"And every one that hath this hope set on him purifieth himself,
even as he is pure" (1 John 3:2, 3).
422. Heaven is a city never built with hands, nor hoary with
the years of time; a city whose inhabitants no census has numbered;
a city through whose streets rush no tide of business,
nor nodding hearse creeps slowly with its burden to the tomb
a city without griefs or graves, without sins or sorrows : without
births or burials, without marriages or mournings : a city which
glories in having Jesus for its King, angels for its guards, saints
for citizens ; whose walls are salvation, and whose gates are
praise. Dr. Guthrie.
423. Swinging to a strap in an uncomfortably crowded streetcar
going home last evening, the thought came to us continually
that, at any rate, we were going home. True, the way of going
had its discomforts, but, in spite of this, it was better to be
going home than to be going in the opposite direction, in which
there was plenty of room in the vacant cars. The Christian may
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